What Happened to 'Emotional Baggage'?

Cast your mind back to 2010. One Direction is winning the hearts of X-Factor viewers, the iPad is released to the public, girlies are walking round in chunky Jeffrey Campbells and “Hide yo kids, hide yo wife” is doing the rounds online. 

Buried among these recognisable cultural touchstones, there was Baggage. Forgotten by some, remembered by many, Baggage was an American reality game show hosted by Jerry Springer that aired on the Game Show Network. It ran for 4 seasons and received high ratings.

Three contestants stood on stage with suitcases and opened them up to reveal their “baggage”. Based on what they exposed they were eliminated, round by round, by a sexy single — until one winner remained and the duo got a date. The baggage included things like “I’m a bisexual”, “I have no car and live on my brother's couch”, “I still play with my transformers” and “I cry every day.” These revelations were played off as undeniably off-putting to any normal person. 

While the show itself focussed on practical insights, “emotional baggage” was commonly used in the early to mid 2000s to refer to more serious, emotional struggles. You might have called it '“baggage” if someone grew up with divorced parents or was in multiple unhappy relationships. Even depression, or other mental illnesses, would be referred to flippantly as “baggage”. And when it came to relationships, being baggage-free was top priority. 

Nowadays, these kinds of judgments feel shallow and uncaring. Plenty of people have been raised in single-parent families, have a few exes and struggle to feel tip-top mentally. Finding someone whose life has been picture perfect isn’t realistic, and also… isn’t that interesting. Our differences and difficulties form us. They make us into the complex people we are as adults. 

In the 2000s, analysing someone’s value in your life was a normal part of dating pool considerations – and it’s a way of viewing others that’s made a concerning return. We might think we’ve moved on from these ideas, but judging someone’s “baggage” is still commonplace. All we’ve done is attach new words to it. Think of “warning signs”, “the ick” and “red flags”.

In recent years, the term has developed a new meaning.

Suddenly, someone’s taste in movies can be a red flag, the fact they only have 26 followers can be a red flag, their lack of positive family relationships can be a red flag. It’s become both watered down and weaponized. Rather than accepting that people are nuanced – or that we may not understand what it’s like in their shoes – we’ll write someone off before we get close based on our own assumptions.

But newsflash: Someone having different tastes, interests or personality traits from you isn’t a sign that they’re a bad or weird person, they’re just not for you. 

Looking back on Baggage, it was a smorgasbord of ugly, closed-minded judgements. A crowd laughing and shouting at a contestant because he revealed he wears women's trousers because he likes how they fit? It sounds ridiculous, but have we really changed?

In many ways, no. But that doesn’t mean we can’t. 

It’s incredibly important to learn to differentiate between language that's meant to help people analyse and escape harmful relationships, such as risk factors, and language that’s just a cover for being judgemental.

Opening ourselves to other people’s experiences and lifestyles and aiming to be more understanding of our differences is a much better way of creating a positive dating environment. Having boundaries is important, but cutting something romantic off with someone based on a superficial factor, like a poorly paying job or odd sense of style, immediately closes off the possibility of something good developing. No matter who you date, there’ll be parts of them you learn to accept that you weren’t prepared for.

Let’s leave “baggage” in the past.

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa. You can find her @rachellydiab on IG and Letterboxd and see her film criticism on Youtube.